


When Tears Will Not Do

by nothingeverlost



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingeverlost/pseuds/nothingeverlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks she’s dead, at first; her body is impossibly still and when he tentatively reaches out with his magic there’s little enough of her essence to probe.  It’s the slightest flutter of her lips as she breathes that first alerts him to the life that barely remains.  The murmur of her heart is only just detectable.  </p>
<p>Not dead, but dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Tears Will Not Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lethe (PersephonePenguin)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersephonePenguin/gifts).



> A secret Santa gift for Persephonepenguin, who asked for 'rescued, journey, phoenix, hope, fire'

The Queen is, by turns, both foolish and clever. She taunts her old master, but she does so from afar, sending another to do the dirty work. The man who arrives with that which she’s chosen to call a gift is cloaked in the armor of a Black Knight. Strangely it does not suit him, for all that the measurements are right.

“Leave now and I won’t kill you.” He stands at his wheel, trying to forget. Trying to remember. Neither works, or both do; the result is the same. The pain exists still but now he can not picture the exact sparkle in her eye. Over a month, since he turned his back on her and took her home away.

“Death would be a blessing, and one that is denied me.” The man speaks with an accent not quite right for a man of the Queen’s country. Rumpelstiltskin looks at him for the first time.

“You wish to die?” No one has ever asked for death, before. Riches, eternal life, the hand of a princess, yes, but never death. That he grants when he wishes, not when requested.

“I wish for freedom, even if that freedom comes in death.” He looks down at the bundle he carries. “But it is not my wishes that bring me here.”

“The Queen,” he says with a snarl. He can not care, now, that she is the monster of his own creation. He only cares that the light he knew for such a brief moment is gone, never to be returned.

“She bade me bring you a gift, with her compliments. She said it would interest you.” He lays the bundle on the table. As he steps back the blanket falls away and Rumpelstiltskin’s world comes to a jarring stop.

“Belle.” The gift of the Queen is a woman, skin so pale it’s almost translucent. She’s thinner than she was, when last he saw her. And too still. He pushes the man out of his way, to get a better look.

He thinks she’s dead, at first; her body is impossibly still and when he tentatively reaches out with his magic there’s little enough of her essence to probe. It’s the slightest flutter of her lips as she breathes that first alerts him to the life that barely remains. The murmur of her heart is only just detectable. 

Not dead, but dying.

“She did this.” He allows himself a single moment of rage, but no more. Later he will rip out the heart of a Queen and make her dance to his Danse Macabre until she begs for him to take her last breath. Now he needs all the magic he possesses to halt the ebb of Belle’s fragile life. he rests a single hand on her chest, a touch more intimate than anything he’d dared when she was his housekeeper. He wills her heart to continue beating, and feels the echo of the fluttering.

“You’ll carry her up the stairs, dearie, and if you harm her anything Regina has done to you will be child’s play.” When he is sure that her lungs will continue to inhale he flicks a finger in the man’s direction. He will use any resource at his disposal to save his Belle, including the man he has no reason to trust. He’s no fool, though, and with the gesture of his hand locks all entrances into and out of the castle. Even if the man were to run he’d find no escape. “All the way to the tower, and be quick about it.”

There are things he needs to prepare, and not a moment to waste. There’s time enough to curse, though, as he gathers the books and potion ingredients, and calls up a cot and blankets. Belle looks so cold, and even as he knows that she’s beyond the comfort a blanket will bring he feels the need to provide them. He’s denied her basic human comforts too many times already.

“You have a name.” There’s no reason the man can’t set Belle down, but he takes her from him and carries her across the room himself. She’s lighter than she’d been when he broke her fall so many months ago. Yet even as he frets there’s a part of him reveling in simply knowing for the first time in a month where she is, and being able to touch her.

“Humans call me Huntsman,” the man answers, though it’s clear even without looking that the name is not one he claims. Rum finds it interesting, as well, that the man sees himself as something separate from human.

“Yes, but what is your name?” He has no patience for games today.

“I have no need for a name; my brothers don’t speak in the tongues of men.” Interestingly, there’s not a trace of guile to him. His eyes are as honest as a child’s.

“Drink this, Wolf.” He selects a glass vial from the table after he has Belle settled with a great deal of care, blankets tucked around her. One might think she was only sleeping, if they didn’t look too closely. Rumpelstiltskin’s skin, however, itches with the wrongness of it.

“How do you...

“Do not tire me with your questions. Drink. It will cloak you from anyone but myself. Not even someone with magic will be able to sense you for a sennight, nor will they be able to use your heart as a weapon against you.” A pesky detail, that, but at least he can temporarily cut the strings on Regina’s pet lapdog. What happens after that, well, it really wasn’t his concern. “I may find it useful to have you around; someone needs to watch the girl when I can not.”

“You can save her?” The wolf man swallows the potion without hesitation; perhaps he is not as interested in death as he first professed. Or perhaps he’s more interested in Belle’s welfare than a pack mule for the Queen should be.

“She’s not lost yet.” She’s delicate, and even now he can feel her moving farther and farther away from him. She’s not lost yet but hope is a fragile thing. Not since he held his son’s hand at the edge of a vortex has any grip been so tentative. She may yet die.

He will not allow it.

There is no point wasting his time with paltry remedies. Phoenix tears are precious and rare; the few he has were hard won from a wizard who had demanded not only a mirror of great value but a pair of socks as well. They’re protected in a vial of onyx to block the light, and only the most powerful need would compel him to use them. They’re meant for a potion of True Love, once he manages to find the last key ingredients. Now they are Belle’s.

“I’m told they taste like a rainbow might, if you could catch one,” he says as he uses the barest pressure of his finger to open her mouth. Her head is cradled in the crook of his arm as he tips the vial onto her tongue. It’s impossible to resist the urge to stroke her cheek as he waits for her to swallow. Her skin is cool and almost waxy. His Belle has always reminded him of the sun, even when such a comparison was an unflattering one in his mind, a man too used to shadows. She was warmths and sun and smiles. Regina had taken everything that Belle was. Perhaps, as a lesson, he would make her dance in a fire.

“There are kitchens, down below. You may eat what you find, and sleep in any chamber that has an open door.” The room that was Belle’s always remained closed now; it had since the third night after she’d left and he’d woken from a drunken stupor with a headache and her scent surrounding him. He’d found his way to her bed, apparently, and had slept in it all night.

“You’ll be summoned when you’re needed.” He only glances away from Belle for long enough to see that the wolf understands the dismissal. While he might come in handy later, he’s only in the way now.

“We’re alone now, dearie. You can open your eyes.” He knows it’s not going to be that simple, but it doesn’t stop him from hoping. He longs to see the gentle blue irises, so different from his own solid black ones. So much kinder.

“You will not let her win. Think of your books; what would they be if the villain of the piece was triumphant and the damsel was the one to fall?” She would not like being called a damsel; perhaps he half hopes that she will open her eyes just to explain that she wishes to be the hero of her own story, not a damsel to be rescued. Damsel trapped or hero on an adventure; he’d rather cast her as either then think of his own role, as the monster, the minotaur, the beast.

Monsters always ended the story as alone as the villain did.

“You’re safe here, Belle. I promise you that it’s safe to open your eyes. She won’t come here, and I’ll never send you away again.” Send her away? She’d be lucky if he let her out of his sight anytime in the next year.

“I thought... I was wrong, Belle. I didn’t believe anyone could love me, because I didn’t think I could love anyone. Only Bae, and it’s been so long.” He feeds her with his magic, just a trickle; too much would shock her system more than it’s been already been, or come with a price higher than he dared ask her to pay. It wasn’t enough to miss, and certainly not enough to drain him; the bone weary exhaustion is something else. Something older. 

“Bae. My son. That’s his name; Baelfire, but I called him Bae. I was scared Regina was using you to take my power. I need it to find my son.” He would love no one, he’d once vowed, until he had his boy back. “He’s not the only one I need. I looked for you, Belle. I swear I did.”

He talks. He apologizes. He cajoles. He yells. Anything he can think of, to get a reaction from her. As the sun comes up he tries to one thing that might succeed where the phoenix tears have not yet.

He kisses her. It’s a hesitant thing at first, as if she’s shatter at the touch. Or recoil. When he can barely feel her breath against his mouth his desperation wins out and the kiss becomes something out of his darkest dreams. He wants to possess her, to become part of her, to twine his soul with hers. If he could give her life by giving up his own he would.

She does not stir. Her heart does not beat faster, her breathing is just as shallow, her skin just as cold. Neither phoenix tears nor True Love’s kiss have revived her.

There’s only one thing left to do.

“Wolf.” He only whispers the name, but with the snap of his fingers it’s amplified through the whole of the castle, the grounds, and even the valley between the mountains. In his impatience he waits less than a minute before springing from the cot; he’ll grab the man by his ear and drag him up the stairs if need be. He’s only on the first step when the wolf rounds the corner. 

“You’ll stay here and guard the girl. You any harm comes to her or you attempt to abandon her I will steal your heart away from your mistress, bind it in magics that allow none but myself to touch it, and spend the next fifty years using you as I see fit. I’ll start with having you hunt every wolf in these mountains.” He did not want to leave Belle’s side, but there was no other choice.

“I would guard her for her sake alone. She showed me a kindness.” The knight who was not a knight looks with concern at the sleeping girl. “She is no better?”

“She will be.” Even if he had to march into hell to be certain of it.

Which was exactly what he is planning to do.

The entrance to Hades was not known to many, but he’s lived for far longer than most, and has seen many people die. He’s been responsible for some of those deaths. He knows things that the gods would rather he didn’t. Like how to pay a call to the Lord of the Dead.

“You’ll take me across,” he tells the ferryman. Or ferrywoman. Or ferrything; after so long Charon has become a grey and twisted thing without any real form or visage.

“To cross the river a coin you must pay; once the token is mine, here must you stay.” The hand, if it is a hand, is held out to him. It’s hard to see; Rumpelstiltskin does not want to know if it has form, and drops the coin onto it. The bit of gold vanishes from his hand almost immediately, the boat starting to move once he steps inside. Rumpelstiltskin does not look down into the river; he has no need to see the dead as they float past. He can not bear the thought of seeing Belle, though he does not believe she is so close to Hades as that. Better to look on the other shore, where already the mist is parting.

He has a welcoming party. Or a non-welcoming party, as the case may be. The sands beneath his feet shift as he steps out of the boat. “And here I thought you’d send a minion to bring me to your throne room. Ceremony, and all that.”

“You don’t belong here.” The man who is even less of a man than Rumpelstiltskin himself is the color of moonlight and shadows. It’s difficult to look at him directly without his eyes hurting; he’s dark, but glowing as well, like the waters of Lake Nostos but so much more powerful. “I will not have you spreading discord in my home.”

“Trust me, dearie, I don’t plan to stay long.” It was, perhaps, a risk to speak to a god with so little respect, but he does not fear death.

“I can not give you back the dead. Once they are here...” He shakes his head, slowly. With sorrow, Rumpelstiltskin realizes.

“She’s not dead.” Not yet, at least, though Regina has done her best. “I only ask that you send her back before she crosses the river. Her almost death is at the hands of dark magics, not nature.”

“You’ve sent many a human to me, Rumpelstiltskin, and never sought to retrieve one. Why is this one any different?” He stands as still as a statue, not even blinking.

“I could no more stand her death than you can bear those times when your wife is above the earth, rather than below. But while you have the anticipation of her return, I would have nothing. I doubt my soul will ever find rest in your abode.” Once he had been amused at his ability to ‘trick’ death. Now he knows his long life as the true curse it is. 

“She is your Love.” The woman who stands before him, though she was not there a moment ago, is a golden as her husband is dark. She is not much more than half his size as well, but when she rests a hand on Hades’ arm he loses the stiffness and relaxes against her. They should, perhaps, be a mismatched pair but they are almost one person as they seem to breathe in unison and look at each other without word but obvious conversation.

“She is, dearie. I pushed her away once, and will not allow circumstances to do so again.” He bows down to her, with more respect and less showmanship than he would usually grant. It’s not unlike the bow he gave Belle, before presenting her with the rose. “I brought gifts, for your amusement, if you will permit me?”

“Nothing to eat.” Hades’ voice, for the first time, is sharp and hinting at the power that is more than his own. If he were not dealing for something so precious he might have made a pithy comment about pomegranate seeds.

“I would not dream of it. Nor drink, either. Even if you deny me, I have no wish to harm or bind your wife.” Regina, for all the trouble she’s caused, he can handle. The wrath of Hades would be more power than even he could defend against.

Persephone whispers in her husband’s ear and waits for his nod before inclining her head. “We would like to see what you have brought.”

“My lady.” First, with the snap of his fingers, is a bright yellow daffodil.

“It’s beautiful,” she says as she takes it from him. Her husband barely raises his eyebrow. If gods have eyebrows, that is; it’s still hard to look too closely.

“For a little more cheer.” The glass bottle is fragile, and he hands it to her with care. The potion glows a warm gold. “Sunshine, in a bottle. You can keep it for as long as you like, and hold it in your hand, or you can break the seal and fill a room with sunlight for a few hours.”

“You are a true magician.” She cradles the gift in her palm. Though hads looks down at her he does not show any interest.

“And this, perhaps, is a gift for you both.” He brings, from his bag, a fleece of gold, hard won, but willingly sacrificed. A fleece that had once flown in the heavens and skimmed over the seas, but had never before been in the underworld.

There is a rumbling, not unlike thunder. The laughter of a god. Hades, it seems, is pleased with the gift. “You have please my wife and amused me. You have your wish. I will send your Love back to the sun, as I cannot willingly send my own. But I do this only once; next time she comes to me you will not see her again.”

“I will not let her be taken a second time,” he vows, relief making him tremble. His Belle. He has won her back.

She is not his to win. When she awakens he might still lose her. He will not be the Queen, and keep an unwilling consort, no more than Hades would keep his wife if she wished for permanent freedom from him.

“Go in peace, Rumpelstiltskin. And go in the knowledge that someday we will see you again, many years hence. The Fates decree it.” Persephone’s words offer a strange kind of comfort. He is not doomed to walk alone forever.

“Thank you. She’ll be back, when I return?” he asks, for the first time daring to stare at Hades without looking away.

“You will have to trust.” It’s not an easy thing, what Hades asks, but he nods. For Belle he can have a little faith. 

“I owe you a favor.” It’s a boon that he does not give easily, but it’s necessary to even the scales. A fleece, no matter how it amuses, is not a fair trade for Belle’s life.

“Understood.” Hades holds out a hand. One might expect it to be cold, but it is neither warm nor cool. It simply is. He shakes it; the moment he lets go the gods are gone and he’s once again left with only Charon and the boat.

“Passage for one across the river, thank you. I do love personal service.” He sits in the boat. It does not move, and any hint of patience he possessed at the start of this journey is gone. Magic will not allow him to cross the river, nor skip the long walk to the entrance of the underworld. “I’m waiting.”

“Once the token is mine, here must you stay.” It’s less of a whisper and more like the words from earlier play again in his mind. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. It makes his giggle all the more high pitched.

“But the coin isn’t yours, dearie. I challenge you to produce it.” He’s not fool enough to come unprepared to this place, not for the gods or even a lowly ferryman. When the hand remains empty Rumpelstiltskin laughs. 

“Leprechauns. Annoying little bastards they are, wouldn’t you agree? They charm their coins to return to the pockets of the one who spends it.” He holds up his own hand, and flashes the coin. “Shall I pay you again, or shall we skip the banalities?”

In not much more than a blink of his eye, the boat is across the river. He doesn’t bother with a thank you, or a goodbye. 

It’s an hour’s walk before he sees the sun. It warms his face as he closes his eyes; a moment later he’s standing in the great hall of his own castle, at the base of his stairs. He did not fear walking into the underworld. Climbing his own stairs is another matter. he takes them one at a time, and stops before he reaches the top. Perhaps he should just leave; the wolf will protect her, and she doesn't need to see him.

“...can’t seem to get warm.” The voice, unheard for more than a month, draws him with the same power of a siren’s call. He hears the rumble of another voice, deeper and trying to soothe. It should be him, not the Queen’s toy, at her side.

“Have a nice nap, did you?” He doesn’t mean to sound snide, but he’s the one that traveled into the darkest regions for her and the wolf is the one with his arms around her. It doesn’t please him.

“You’re here.” Her teeth chatter and her body trembles, but it the tears in her eyes that he found hardest to handle.

“Wished I’d stayed away, did you?” His workbench was covered with books and vials. He plays at straightening them up; better than to see her when she tries to find a polite lie.

“Worried you wouldn’t come back.” He dares to glance at her, and despite her chill she’s unwrapped the blanket to hold out a hand to him. “My friend didn’t know where you’d gone or what you’d done, but I know I’m only awake because of you. Regina...”

“Is no one you’ll ever have to worry about again.” He kneels before her, clasping her icy hand in his. His journey has been an exhausting one, but that does not stop him from summoning up a little more magic to help to warm her. He’ll pay whatever cost is necessary. “I’m sorry. If I had known... I’m sorry, Belle.”

“She hates you.” As her skin begins to warm, Belle’s eyes begin to droop. The sleep that threatens, though, is a natural one.

“She may have cause. As do you.” He’d thrown her out, to be kidnapped by a woman who used her as a pawn. She wanted the freedom to travel, and not only had he taken that once, but he allowed another to take it a second time.

“I could never hate you, Rumpelstiltskin.” Her hand, after a moment’s fumbling, finds his cheek. “All I wanted, while I was her prisoner, was to be back here. To be with you. You said forever.”

“I’ll make it forever this time, Belle. I swear it.” Her eyes are closed; he didn’t know if she hears or not. It doesn’t matter. He will tell her again in the morning, and every morning after that, as long as she chose to stay.

“I can carry her down to a room,” the Wolf offers. Rum has almost forgotten he was there, just inches away.

“I will see to her.” He has no intention of letting her go. Perhaps ever. He has her in his arms and was almost to the stairs when he turns.

“I owe you, for Belle. I’ll do what I can to free your heart. No promises, but it might be possible to return it to your own keeping.” He owes Regina a visit, after all. It won’t be so difficult to make a side trip.

“I would be grateful.” The man lowers his head; a wolf showing respect to his alpha.

“Good.” He is too tired to risk anything other than walking to her chamber. As is he only manages to pull back the blankets on her bed and bundle her into them before he collapses on top of the covers. It had been his intention to pull a chair next to the bed, but she’s curled up against him and he would not move for the world. Or the underworld.

“My love,” he whispers, before he falls asleep.


End file.
